The first volume of the Heart-of-the-Blues series is now free online at GuitarMedia. The Heart-of-the-Blues lays a secure foundation in the fretboard pattern that even the greatest guitarists use every time they play. The Heart-of-the-Blues shows you how to use this pattern to add your own improvised solos to any rock, blues or jazz song. This free entry-level guide begins guitarists down the road to fretboard mastery and includes illustrative audio- and video- casts.

Like all GuitarMedia's offerings, the Heart-of-the-Blues provides
step-by-step audio-book instruction and color-coded music booklets,
as well as guitarless bass/drums-only jam-mixes for practicing your
guitar part along with our rhythm section. Using our virtual "band
practices" makes acquiring fretboard mastery akin to jamming with
your buddies rather than sweating over "lessons."

"The Heart-of-the-Blues makes mastering the fretboard really fun for
guitarists, because you're just jamming at band practice--adding your
own guitar part to our jam-mix rhythm tracks. You can see the
patterns to play on our color-coded fretboards, so you can play our
suggested guitar part, or you can mix-and-match the patterns to
improvise your own licks over our rhythm section. The color codes
make it easy for guitarists who can't read music, and even
accomplished musicians will find that our graphics helps them
transpose across the neck as easily as moving a bar-chord up and down
the neck," said Robert 'Colin' Johnson, author of the series.

The Heart-of-the-Blues is an entry-level into the seventy-two volume
series which leads guitarists step-by-step to complete fretboard
mastery. Try out the first step, the Heart-of-the-Blues volume number
one, free. International graphics in downloadable music booklets
includes color-coded chord charts, fretboards, guitar tablature and
traditional sheet music. An audio tutor helps players get started
fast. Each step in the series also includes audio files for the
guitar part by itself and a guitarless bass/drums-only rhythm track
for practicing our licks or just for jamming. Color-coded fretboards
in all playing positions ease improvising, composing, transposing and
"following-the-changes."

"Our graphical improvising guides uses color codes, but they can be
used by players of any level. The entire fretboard is painted with
colors corresponding to each note's doe-ray-me position in that
song's key. Transposing and improvising new melodies becomes a snap,
after you get used to what each color 'sounds like.' I find new ways
of playing things all the time from consulting the painted
fretboards," said Johnson.